My mother at Sixty Six

In this poem, Kamala Das explores the theme of advancing age and the fear of loss and
separation from a dear one, with the realization that the parting may be forever. A sense
of guilt, fear and heartache grip the poet as she bids goodbye to her aged mother,
apprehensive that this may be their last meeting, yet she hopes for the better.

While driving from her parent’s home to Cochin, she notices her mother sitting
motionless besides her dozing, her face pale and drained of all colour and life like a
corpse. This reminds her painfully that her mother has grown old is nearing her end and
could pass away leaving her alone. Unable to bear the gloomy and oppressive thought
she seeks to evade it by looking out of the window at the young trees speeding by and
children running out of their homes happily to play. Their youthful energy, exuberance
and the velocity of life outside are in sharp contrast to the mood in the car and reassure
her.
But after the security check at the airport, looking back at her mother standing a few
yards away, she finds her looking pale and bereft of vitality like the winter moon. The
poet feels that familiar pain and childhood fear at the thought of losing her mother and
of being lonely just as she had felt when she was young. She could only keep smiling to
conceal her fears as she did not wish to transmit her anxiety to her mother. She tell her
‘see you soon’ knowing full well that she might not see her again.

______________________________________________________________________

The poet compares her ageing mother to a ‘winter’s moon’ as her tired face seemed as
pale, faded and bereft of vitality and life.

The ‘old familiar pain’ refers to the heartache that the poet had experienced ever since
childhood when parting from her mother, each time with the fear that it may be forever.
It was intense now as her frail mother was in the dusk of her life and nearing her end.
1m

The poet hid her fear that this parting could be forever behind a smile and said-‘see you
soon, Amma,’ so that her mother would not apprehend her anxiety. The words show her
brave effort to reassure herself and her mother that all was well and they would meet
again soon.
2m

_____________________________________________________________________
SIMPLE PARAPHRASE OF ‘A ROADSIDE STAND’

In this poem, the poet contrasts the lives of poor and deprived countryside people who struggle
to live with the thoughtless city people who don’t even bother to notice the roadside stand that
these people have put up to sell their goodies.

Lines 1 to 6
The poem starts with the description of the roadside stand and the intention behind it. A small
time farmer builds a vegetable stand at the edge of the highway outside his house in the hope that
passing cars would buy the produce and earn a bit of the money that supports cities from falling
into ruin. He only wants to earn a living, he is not begging for money.

Lines 7 to 13
However, no cars ever stop and the ones that even glance in the direction of the stand without
any feeling of compassion or relatedness (out of sorts) only comment about how the construction
spoils the view of the surroundings or how badly painted the wrongly pointed North and South
signs are or to notice without interest the wild berries and squash for sale in the stand or the
beautiful mountain scene.

Lines 13 to 22
The farmer tells the rich passing by to keep their money if they meant to be mean and that the
hurt to the view is not as important as the sorrow he feels on being ignored. He only wishes for
some (city) money so that he may experience the plush life (make our beings expand) portrayed
by the movies and other media, which the political parties are said to be refusing him.

Lines 23 to 31
Frost goes on to say that even though the double- faced benefactors (good-doers) in an act of
mercy plan to relocate them in villages near cities where they can have easy access to the cinema
and the store, they are actually selfish (‘greedy good-doers’ and ‘beasts of prey’) and only help
these "pitiful kin" to indirectly advantage themselves. The altruists wish to make these villagers
completely dependent on them for all their benefits and comforts, thus robbing them of the
ability to think for themselves and what is good for them. 'The ancient way' could mean the old
way when people worked during the day and slept at night. This is being reversed by the new
'greedy good doers' who teach these people to not use their brain. They are unable to sleep at
night because they haven't worked during day time or because they are troubled by their new
lifestyle.

Lines 32 to 43
Frost then talks about his personal feelings, saying that he can hardly bear the thought of the
farmer's dashed hopes. The open windows of the farmer's house seem to wait all day just to hear
the sound of a car stopping to make a purchase. However they are always disappointed, as
vehicles only stop to enquire the price, to ask their way ahead, to reverse or ask for a gallon of
gas.

Lines 44 to 51
According to the poet, the progress required has not been found by these country folk (“the
requisite lift of spirit"). Their lifestyles provide ample evidence to support this fact. He
sometimes feels that it might be best to simply put these people out of their pain and hardships of
existence. However, once rational thinking returns to his mind, he wonders how he would feel if
someone offered to do him this supposed service.

QUESTION AND ANSWERS (TEXTUAL)

The poet highlights the stark reality of class difference between the city rich and rural
poor. He calls for deepest sympathy and concern for the latter. The roadside stand
owner, representative of the rural poor, complains of the snobbish and indifferent
attitude of the city dwellers and the callous politicians who have crushed their hopes
and aspirations by keeping them out of the ambit of development, making them feel
bitter and helpless.

Text Question & Answers

1. The city folk who drove through the countryside hardly paid any heed to
the roadside stand or to the people who ran it. If at all they did, it was to
complain. Which lines bring this out? What was their complaint about
The rich, snobbish city folk sped past the shabby roadside stand on the highway
without as much as a glance or thought for it. And if their glace did stray there, they
reproached it as a blot marring the beauty of the landscape with its artless paint and
sign boards of ‘N’ and ‘S’ turned wrongly.

2. What was the plea of the folk who had put up the roadside stand?

The poor villagers were not looking for charity. They hoped that the rich city folk
would buy their humble produce so that they too would gain the money that makes
the cities prosper and thus remove deprivation from their lives. They too longed for
the life ‘moving pictures’ promised and the benefits city folk enjoyed.

3. The government and other social service agencies appear to help the poor
rural people, but actually do them no good. What shows their double
standards?

The callous government and other social service agencies offer to buy their land as
an act of mercy, promising to relocate them in villages near towns with theatre and
 shops (mere palliatives) which would bring a false sense of well-being. They would
thus be exploited and cheated for selfish gains, lulled into a state of numb
acceptance, become idle, restless lose their sleep.

Explanation: The poet is outraged at the callousness of the government and the
agencies which pose as benefactors of the rural poor but in reality prey on them and
like bees draw away their means of sustenance and thinking power. The news says,
in an act of mercy, the rural poor will be relocated near towns with cinema and
shops, where they would not have to worry for themselves anymore. But in reality
the gullible villagers are deprived of their land, their thinking power and voices. The
small comforts thrust on them give a false sense of well- being but make them
pawns in hands of power-wielders and render them idle, frustrated and sleepless.

4. What is the childish longing that the poet refers to? Why is it vain?

The poet is saddened at the pathetic longing of the poor villagers who hope that
passing cars would stop by, buy their produce and thus enhance their lives. Their
longing is childish and in vain as the selfish city dwellers just speed by and if they
stop it is only to ask for directions, or to buy a gallon of gas which they do not sell or
to reverse their vehicles. There is a total disconnect between them.

2. Which line tells us about the insufferable pain that the poet feels at the
thought of the plight of the rural poor?
The poet, deeply troubled and unable to bear the suffering of the rural poor, wants to
end their misery through putting an end to their complaining voices, but he knows it
is not a sane suggestion. He implicitly pleads for compassion and sincere concern
for the rural poor by Government and the rich to bring a change in their lives.

Language study

Stanzas of different length and uneven rhyme scheme to give it desirable movement
and emphasis.
Simple language, effective use of metaphors, personification, alliteration and transferred
epithet, oxymoron

Metaphors – “The flower of cities from sinking and withering faint.’

The rural poor long for some money that nourishes the growth of cities, makes them
flourish and its people prosperous. Just like a flower is watered to keep it blossoming,
so also commerce has made cities blossom.

“While greedy good-doers, beneficent beasts of prey,

Swarm over their lives enforcing benefit…”

People posing as benefactors are compared to beasts of prey for they cheat and
exploit the gullible poor villagers by taking away their land with promises of relocating
them near cities with benefits like cinema and shops. By doing so they take away their
means of survival while thrusting small benefits - palliatives which give a false sense of
well-being to the villagers while in reality they become idle and no longer think for
themselves. The good-doers are like bees drawing on them for selfish gains and ruining
their pattern of life.

Personification: eg-‘A roadside stand pathetically pled’

‘The polished traffic passed with a mind ahead’

‘The sadness that lurks near the open window there… prayer’

‘selfish cars’-transferred epithet + personification

Oxymoron: 1)Greedy good-doers (opposites have been brought together to

2) Beneficent beasts of prey

Stephen Spender highlights the plight of slum children by using vivid images and apt words to
picture a classroom in a slum. Through this he touches, in a subtle manner, the themes of social
injustice and inequalities.

Lines 1, 2
The opening line of the poem uses an image to contrast the slum children’s faces with those of
privileged children. The image used is ‘gusty waves’ indicating energy, joy and exuberance. But
these are missing from faces of these children. The next image of ‘rootless weeds’ produces
double effect. ‘Weeds’ indicate being unwanted and ‘rootless’ indicates not belonging. The slum
children are like ‘rootless weeds’ unwanted by society and not belonging to society. Their
uncombed hair are untidily scattered about their pale faces.

Lines 3 to 8
Next, the poet describes some slum children to show their despondency and hopelessness.There
is a tall girl whose head is weighed-down with sadness, disinterest and fatigue. She looks
burdened with poverty and misery. Another boy is thin, emaciated like paper and his eyes bulge
out from his thin bony body looking furtive like rat’s eyes. Another seems to have inherited
stunted and twisted growth of bones from his father. Spender has used the word ‘reciting’ to
show that instead of studying/reciting, a normal activity in school, the boy had only recited
(repeated) his father’s crippling disease. This could suggest that the boy’s condition seem to have
arisen because of his poverty especially his inability to avail heath services. Right at the back of
the badly lit room is an unnoticed young boy. He is probably too young for poverty to have
stifled his childish imagination. He daydreams of the squirrel’s game and about the tree house,
distracted from the classroom. He could also be mentally challenged thus, unaffected by the
dismal classroom.

Lines 9 to 12
Spender then describes the dismal classroom. The word ‘sour’ used to describe the cream walls
of the classroom indicates its neglected, rundown condition – a lace where all dreams would turn
sour. Contradicting this state and the slum children are Shakespeare’s head indicating erudition,
the picture of a clear sky at dawn and a beautiful Tyrolese valley indicating beauty of nature and
hope, dome of an ancient city building standing for civilization and progress and a world map
awarding the children the world. All these seem ironic when contrasted with the misery and
hopeless condition of the slum children.

Lines 13 to 16
But for the slum children, their limited world is what they can see through the windows of the
classroom. Their future is foggy, bleak and dull. Their life/world is confined within the narrow
streets of the slum enclosed by the dull sky far away from rivers, seas that indicate adventure and
learning and from the stars that stand for words that can empower their future.

Lines 17 to 24
The poet feels that the head of Shakespeare and the map are cruel temptations for these children
living in cramped houses (holes), whose lives revolve around (slyly turns) dullness (fog) and
hopelessness (endless night) as they imagine and long for (steal) adventure(ships), for a better
future (sun) and for love. Their emaciated wasted bodies compared to slag (waste) heaped
together seemed to be wearing the clothes of skin covering their peeping bones and wearing
spectacles of steel with cracked glasses looking like bottle bits mended. The slum is their map as
big as the doom and their life (time and space) foggy and dim. The poet repeatedly uses the word
fog to talk about the unclear, vague and dull life of the slum children.

Lines 25 to 32
The only hope of a life beyond the slums that enclose their lives like catacombs is some initiative
by the governor, inspector of schools or a visitor. The poem ends with the poet fervently hoping
that slum children will have access to better education and a better way of life. He uses the words
‘Break o break open’ to say that they have to break out from the miserable hopeless life of the
slum world so that they can go beyond the crippling slums to the green fields and golden sands
(indicating the unlimited world). These can become their teacher and they can learn directly (run
naked) from the open pages (leaves) of nature and the world which is sustained (whose
language) by the sun standing for energy and life.